Sunday, November 30, 2014

Taiwan hasn't declared independence yet. But they are clearly moving in that direction, apparently in response to the Chinese crackdowns in Hong Kong. From Generational Dynamics:

Taiwan's ruling nationalist party KMT (Kuomintang) suffered disastrous losses in local elections across Taiwan on Saturday, giving victories to the opposing DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), and forcing the resignation of the prime minister. Thousands of municipalities, including the capital city Taipei, that had been ruled for years by KMT mayors and politicians will not be ruled by DPP mayors and politicians.

The Kuomintang (KMT) is the modern day incarnation of Chiang Kai-shek's original nationalist party of soldiers that fought against Mao Zedong's Communist Revolution and lost, and fled to Hong Kong, then a British colony, and from there to Formosa (Taiwan) in 1949, at the conclusion of the civil war. The KMT position has always been that Taiwan would reunite with China.

KMT held an iron grip on power in Taiwan after the war, and that only began to fade in the 1980s with the founding of the DPP. However, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, which people in Taiwan viewed with horror, proved to be a catalyst in turning Taiwanese people against Beijing, and by 2000 the DPP won a national election. A DPP corruption scandal in 2006 put KMT back into power, and KMT officials have been working closely with Beijing officials to woo Taiwan's public to voluntarily want reunite with China.

The policy hasn't really been effective. There are two groups of people who don't want to reunite. One group is the indigenous Taiwanese people who lived there before 1949, and who have suffered at the hands of the KMT. Young people generally form the second group, and they distrust China and they distrust the KMT for selling out to China.

The problem isn't that the Red Navy is capable of defeating the US Navy. It isn't. But it increasingly looks capable of giving the US Navy a seriously bloody nose if it intervenes in cross-strait hostilities between China and Taiwan, and never forget, the Chinese always play a long game. And there is no way, none, that the American people have any stomach whatsoever for war with China after thirteen years of pointless and desultory war in Afghanistan.

I suspect the Chinese may be aware of that, which may explain why so many of their wealthy are stashing their children and buying up properties in the USA. I doubt there will be any open war, but there will likely be growing pressure being exerted on Taiwan with the threat of force behind it.

You can thank the traitorous Clintons for whatever advances the Red sea serpent has over the USN. But we'd still kick their ass, and the US public would be behind a war of this scale. Were not talking about some lowely mid east shit hole here.

The Red Navy, itself, doesn't have to defeat the U.S. Navy. It has an Air Force and Missile Force. But then, the U.S. Navy knows if it puts its fleet in the Taiwan Straight, it will be annihilated. So they won't. The missile barrage of Japans air fields, possibly Guam's, will limit U.S. air capability. The F-35 can't turn, can't climb, can't run. Once they expended their load, they are sitting ducks for China's Air Force.

According to the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, while most Americans surveyed thought of Taiwan as a better friend than China, (or Turkey for what it matters), only 26% thought we should deploy troops to defend Taiwan. In comparison, 47% thought we should deploy troops to defend Korea.

The KMT position has always been that Taiwan would reunite with China.

I don't count myself an expert but I was under the impression that the KMT's position wasn't so much that it would reunite with Chine but rather it was the government of China.

China's preferred strategy for Taiwan at the moment appears to be voluntary assimilation on it's part. The DPP appears to have a lot of modern lefty boilerplate, not quite incompatible with China's Maoist Communist Party.

Chinese hegemony over Taiwan in exchange for internal identity independence, may be acceptable to both.

Betting on America long term doesn't look that smart at the moment, so that's the attraction for Taiwan.

Betting against the US Navy is still a chumps bet. So avoiding the loss of face from a shattering naval defeat is the attraction for China.

You also have to remember China's strategy game of choice isn't Chess, it's Go. Consider the strategic implications from that mindset regarding China and Taiwan.

I have lived in Taiwan as a missionary now for over 10 years. If Taiwan is to claim independence it is going to need to learn how to rule itself. Up to now, most Taiwanese have not had a sense of themselves as a people or as a nation. Only within the last couple of years have I seen a minority form the Sunflower Movement and become politically active. I hope it continues... still, the majority of my College students want no part of politics, want no part of marriage, want no part of fighting, and just assume China will overcome someday so why not let them. Those students most closely associated with Christianity seem to have a larger percentage of Taiwanese that care about self-rule and assume that they can make a difference. Unfortunately the major interest in is establishing better social services and anti-capitalism systems. That is all they have known from school, and seen in the form of capitalism practiced in the KMT's class warfare closed system. I am excited about the future for Taiwan but unless more independent thinking, libertarian leaning, and freedom minded teachers and workers come in to help them find their way, I guarantee you that an independent Taiwan will be far more socialist that libertarian.

I work designing defenses against antiship missiles for the USN. 96 VLS cells per DDG, a max of 5 DDGs guarding a carrier, assume half defensive missiles & half offensive. My professional engineering opinion (aka elementary school math) is that any group capable of firing 250 missiles of any variety over any timescale can easily sink an entire carrier strike group by depleting the defensive ammo supply. Fire them all at once and the number is much less, due to inefficiencies in the fire control & coordination systems. The USN is not only not capable of dealing with the PLAN, it is incapable of combating anyone better equipped than Somali pirates. Even that is subject to change if the pirates get better funding.

There may be open war with China because Americans love a good war and China's young officer corps is filled with nationalists. China's neighbors, except for South Korea, are working to encircle China. If there is a war with China, it will not be one-on-one with only the U.S. if China miscalculates. Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and Australia will join, as may Indonesia and Malaysia. The prize will be the energy resources in the South China Sea. The one glaring mistake is the boneheaded Russia policy, but that's not surprising considering Obama is an ignoramus and this Asian alliance is being built by Asian nations and Australia; the U.S. has not been leading.

Wildcards are Taiwanese & Chinese nationalism. It would be trivial to goad China into war by having Japan do something provocative. The Chinese have whipped their own people into an insane frenzy, the anti-Japan riots in 2012 were over a history book, and Chinese burned down Japanese car dealerships and beat Chinese people into comas for driving Japanese cars. China's officer corps is also more militaristic and nationalist. In Taiwan, the education system is pushing nationalism now. The key for Taiwan independence is time. As long as they do not give up independence, the population is growing more independence minded over time.

"You can thank the traitorous Clintons for whatever advances the Red sea serpent has over the USN."

Don't forget the help our bestest "ally" in the whole wide world has given the ChiComs. That little alien culture on the other side of the world just loves to send American defense technology to China. News stories from 1993 reference it happening for the preceding decade. The latest scandal about it hit in December 2013.

It's scary to contemplate a PLAN v. USN battle, because I don't think the US has the emotional maturity after 40+ years of worthless wars to be able to tolerate the type of losses that would have to be absorbed in a real pitchd multi-day naval battle. After the first few dozen embedded CNN news crew go down with a carrier group or two, it might get better. After any serious loss, the pressure to go nuclear from the media and retired general set would be borderline catastrophic. I know that he USN has sailors and captains that could think tactically and strategically to win a major engagement over the course of several days, but domestically, I doubt after the first few small ships start sinking there would be any hope of sustaining the battle politically.

It would be interesting to see how the ChiComm's war game that scenario out.

I have lived in Taiwan as a missionary now for over 10 years... -The Haggard

My briefer experiences in Taiwan in a similar capacity so far echo yours. (I'm doing low-income church-planting up north. Do you have a LINE account?)

Election night was interesting. Basically you have a situation similar to the recent US elections. President Ma in Taiwan is very unpopular (partially because he's pro-anything which keeps the money flowing, which means pro-China) so this vote is partially to punish him and the KMT which haven't really distanced themselves from him, more than any enthusiasm for the DPP, which the article rightly notes had a great chance but bungled it by dabbling in the same corruption they claimed to be coming in to sweep out. Like the GOP, now they have to make people happy or the power will simply flip back to the other side next election.

But the other longer-term thing going on is that because the KMT power base is up north in Taipei, most of the money the government puts back into Taiwan stays in Taipei. But because of this, people from the south, who heavily favor the DPP, are flocking up there for jobs, changing the electorate.

It was almost an even more crushing defeat for the KMT, as all those southerners coming up here nearly got the DPP candidate elected in New Taipei City (not Taipei, former Taipei county).

The ChiComs would be very foolish to engage the US now; in their own military journals, they discuss openly the fact that as America becomes browner, stupider and more vibrant, and that as the Jewish snake tightens its grip on America's throat, it becomes more worthless as a power every passing day. There's a PLA military faction which advises that all China has to do is sit on its hands and wait until USA/EU drops dead of its own stupidity. Then the world will be theirs without firing a shot, with only moronic Africans and Muslims to oppose them, the work of a day or two to subdue.

We should learn from the history of previous naval warfare. Any naval dust-up with the Chinese will most probably be very different than anything we have imagined. New weapons and tactics come out of nowhere, and turn the tide of battle. I would not be surprised if something as unsexy and prosaic as mines turn out to be the wonder weapon of the war.

On a different note I can imagine something like this: Chinese try to aim 200 anti-ship missiles at carrier group. 50 missiles will not spin up due to problems with dead batteries. 50 more refuse to launch due to failure of small cheap part substituted by manufacturer for spec. part. 100 missiles do launch but 50 spin wildly out of control due to programming error in transcribing stolen Western software. Of the remaining 50 missiles 25 lose their fix on the carrier group due to loss of satellite info. due to US killer satellites. The remaining 25 missiles home in on the group. 20 are shot down by the carrier groups missile defense systems. 3 crash into the sea as their targeting system encounters an unknown programming glitch. One hits a destroyer in the bow and passes directly through it, as the warhead fails to explode. The remaining missile explodes on the flight deck of the carrier causing destruction similar to that caused on the Oriskany or the Forrestal during Viet Nam. The destroyer returns to port, and the carrier resumes fight ops within a few hours.

Vox hit the nail on the head with regards to the stashing of capital by the wealthy Chinese. I know real estate agents and brokers that say they've never seen anything like this in terms of the amount of all cash deals in the buying up of real estate in NYC, for example. The same process is happening in London, Miami, Texas, and California.

What Chinese crackdown? If you mean the Government of Hong Kong sending in the police to control the unruly occupy crowd (funded, supplied and paid for by local powermongers), in about the gentlest way possible, then yes, I guess you could call it a crackdown.

Most people in HK are sick to death of these little shit disturbers, and feel the HK government isn't doing enough to send them packing. Meanwhile the police are hamstrung and are unwilling and unable to evict the lot for fear of being seen as too "rough handed" in the face of a completely hostile press. (Once of the press magnates is actually funding the occupiers - no conflict of interest there).

If Beijing is concerned about peacefully joining with Taiwan, they'll keep their fat fingers from diddling Hong Kong and Macao. Which is pretty much what they've done, except for a few exceptions.

Speaking of Chinese manufactured goods, I thought this was interesting: the Elsa doll from "Frozen" has surpassed Barbie worldwide as the doll of choice. It seems all little girls on Earth want to be a very pale, white, blonde princess with a tragic, remote demeanor who has a sexy dress and a brilliant theme song.

Soft power still counts for something. Maybe our best secret weapon is John Lasseter.

The competitive primary and secondary education system is still based on sets of exams that encourage rote learning instead of critical thinking at a young age. Rote learning has its merits, as I learned as an immigrant in Canada where I excelled in math and sciences and along with other immigrants (from Hong Kong and elsewhere) we arrived with skills several grades above the average Canadian. However, in terms of the humanities and liberal arts, it is imperative that our young people can think for themselves and that a rational discussion based on evidence is critical for making decisions such as whether or not to attend the protest.

as America becomes browner, stupider and more vibrant, and that as the Jewish snake tightens its grip on America's throat, it becomes more worthless as a power every passing day.

Ah, but you are wrong! We have David Goldberg's assurance that the Chinese respect and admire the Jews, and will welcome them with open arms in the event that Americans ever ungratefully turn on those people who have blessed them so richly in manifold ways since moving from Europe to America.

For those of us who are truly anti-war... Lew Rockwell, Kevin Carson, myself... seeing the 7th Fleet sunk to the bottom is everything we hope and dream. Even one sunk U.S. carrier would be the ultimate revenge on the neocons.

It would be nice if the Chinese immigrating to the US and boosting house prices for the natives would also vote for freedom instead of more control. The Vietnamese here "get it", the Chinese not so much.

"Even one sunk U.S. carrier would be the ultimate revenge on the neocons."

I'd much rather sink a ship full of neocons. Besides, a sunk carrier would mean nothing at all to them. No Jews aboard.

Thinking further about it, I reckon it would be a fun thought experiment if USA did go to war with China over Taiwan. It would be such a stirring sight, to see the long lines of patriotic Chinese-Americans at the military recruiting stations, bravely giving up their cushy gigs at the universities they didn't build, in order to risk their lives for the nation they love so much.

Or, just high-tailing it off to Vancouver and Australia as fast as their little legs could carry them.

Rothbardian might be Bath House Barry in disguise. Does anyone know if there are still 5 US carriers parked in Norfolk VA's port?http://beforeitsnews.com/military/2013/02/5-nuclear-carriers-into-harbor-for-routine-inspections-this-is-definitely-a-problem-2449952.html

"The problem isn't that the Red Navy is capable of defeating the US Navy. It isn't. But it increasingly looks capable of giving the US Navy a seriously bloody nose"

The US carrier fleet would get wiped out in the first 60 mins of any engagement by missile strikes. There is little to no defense against vast number of missiles simultaneously fired at the ships.

The US fleet is great against smaller powers during the occasional "humanitarian intervention" and to show off as propaganda on TV. As an actual functional weapon of war against a "serious" power (Russia, China, soon India and others) it is completely useless and is basically a human tripwire for massive US retaliation via aerial bombardment and possibly nuclear war.

The US won't go to war under any conceivable circumstances . Even if the Chi-Coms couldn't or didn't simply turn off everything they've sold us, a few simple EMP weapons would do the job.

The war would go something like this

War starts

US fires back

China pops off EMPs and sends this message "if you return fire, we drop salted bombs on your cities and farms."

The choice would than be frying them if the nukes work and the military is willing to fire or watch the vibrants and the famines do the work for the Chinese . And yes we might purge the Chinese, they don't care about that anyway and if they don't use it an excuse or invasion or to stir up trouble, expats are unreliable and expendable anyway

Thus we won't go to war, heck in the state we are in, we can't go to war with china or Russia and even many minor ones are beyond our willingness to handle.

Lastly, the easiest way for China or Russia for that matter to win is to encouraging us to do what we are doing now. As mentioned the enrichment going on will destroy the country and if it doesn't and it accidentally creates a Caesar or a civil war, they win anyway.

In the long run baring a very well run Junta or a couple of theoretical civil war scenarios, China and to a degree Russia has nearly won now. It simply a race between Chinese social stresses over demography, ecology and economy and US implosion. Same with Russia though they have an edge over China if that doesn't go nuclear.

So long as we are pointlessly speculating. I will add the most pointless speculation of all.

Your people and the Sea.

As Col. Boyd told us, the most import dimension of war is the moral one.

What is your people's vision of themselves at sea?

A major factor that governs whether or not you will be a victor at sea is whether or not your tribe is comfortable on the waves.

Nature vs Nurture is not a minor issue here. The sea is a completely unforgiving genetic selector.

Although it does not have the final say either.

The Romans were not a sea going people but they eventually developed a navy out sheer organizational bloody mindedness. Too bad for Carthage, (the leading naval power at the time or at least before that).

More recently. The battle of Jutland should have gone Germany's way. Their advantages were obvious on paper. However they only sortied against the Royal Navy once and even though they were winning the battle, their nerve broke and they ran back to port. The Germans never left it again.

The Axis powers are another example.

If the Germans had attacked Britain after the Fall of France they would have won. It would have been a flimsy and unsupported attack but they would have won, the British had nothing at that point. But the channel held them off. Hitler couldn't bring himself to cross it. "On land,I am hero. At sea I am a coward."

Now Japan is the more interesting study because that was a contest between two sea going peoples. The Japanese won the first two major sea battles but lost the third. Thirty nine months later the most warlike culture on Earth suddenly remembered they were pacifists.

Going to war with America in those days, tended to remind people of that.

The US carrier fleet would get wiped out in the first 60 mins of any engagement by missile strikes. There is little to no defense against vast number of missiles simultaneously fired at the ships.

As someone else pointed out, and anyone who has experience with Chinese electronics manufacturers knows, the likelihood of them all working is low. Indeed, it seems likely that less than 50% will work as required.

CS, I don't think the Chinese are terribly conformable at sea though they have a long seafaring tradition with at least some long range exploration and trade but I don't think they need to be Seafolk to win

. They have lots of ways to fight that don't require ship to ship combat and they probably have the ability to hit CONUS directly from China with a number of conventional and irregular weapons. They might be able to shut off systems built in China or maybe Taiwan, hack networked systems and maybe shut down the power grid destroy the GPS system with lasers and attack our land with stealth drones and maybe swarm missiles

They also have rather sneaky submersibles and probably better shore and air defenses than we do

We'd win (baring nukes) but they can easily make it a Pyrrhic victory and make our own internal contradictions destroy us.

I've lived in China for almost 5 years now and the boots on the ground perspective is this: Taiwan *IS* China just as much as the South was part of the Union. And yes I picked the Southern states circa 1860 example carefully as the mainland Chinese people are of a mind that Taiwan is theirs, period, end of discussion, with violence at the other end if necessary. I remind the U.S. that while China has a nuclear force akin to the USSR circa 1970 that you only have to knock out the power grid with high altitude EMP bursts to completely destroy the U.S.'s ability to transport food to the cities. 6 or 7 over CONUS and the U.S. is in the dark for quite awhile with lots of hungry urbans roaming around looking for food. There has never been a better conflict to stay the f*** out of. Leave this one ALONE. If Taiwan declares independence that's the time to "decry violence" and publicly state that the way China governs it's own territories is China's businss and not ours.

And yes I fully admit that my position on this is greatly influenced by my not wanting to be dragged out of my bed at 2 in the morning at gunpoint when the U.S. attacks a Chinese fleet.

Have they ever tested the DF-21D ASBM? yes. And it is enough to have our vaunted U.S. Navy worried. And then there is the hypersonic WU-14 ASBM. They are still working on how to defeat them, is stages. And there is the Sunburn. And there was another one better than the Sunburn, but I can't recall right now.

As if they have tried this on a massive strike against the U.S. Navy, no. But then, we no longer have a massive Navy. And how many carriers do you want to lose in the straights? And it is really amusing to hear that China makes cheap crap, so their military hardware is cheap crap. What planet do you people live on? Hell, Russia can park subs off the coast and bye-bye civilians before you know what happened.

I get it. It is good old American patriotism. Stinking drunk Ruskies, and fish-head Chinks. Who don't have the capability to fart a fart out of their ass. USA! USA! USA! Face it, some of their weapons are superior to ours.

Redundant array of inexpensive missiles. For sufficient quantities, you need only 10% to work.

Wrong analogy. RAID uses encoding techniques to work around the failures and can only tolerate one or two failures per group (it's a bit more complicated than that).

However, the problems I am referring to are manufacturers substituting sub-standard parts and Chinese manufacturers really like to do that. It wont matter to them if their shit causes failures in the field. And my experience is that they fail when the temp is too low or too high ... or they degrade more quickly over time ...

"The ChiComs would be very foolish to engage the US now; in their own military journals, they discuss openly the fact that as America becomes browner, stupider and more vibrant, and that as the Jewish snake tightens its grip on America's throat, it becomes more worthless as a power every passing day."

Colonel Wang hopes his complaint will convince the Department of Defense to institute more sensitivity training, so that future espionage missions won’t leave his men “dead to the world, eyes glazed over, with no hope for mankind.”

Sorry, I can only tell you what an acquaintance, who's involved in the investigation of the backers behind the movement, has told me unofficially. They said that there are at least three major backers pouring money in to keep the "protests" going.

Consider it an unverified rumour repeated by someone who got it from an unsubstantiated source.

People here are pissed off though, and getting more so and they are not pissed off at the government.

{offtopic}Years back, there was a popular uprising against the government when it was trying to pass draconian security legislation at the behest of Beijing which would have severely curtailed freedoms in HK. The discontent increased until one day almost an eighth of the population took to the streets to protest peacefully and the government backed down. The politician responsible for pushing it was driven out in disgrace

We did have some serious riots even more recently than that. A bunch of Korean hooligans came to down during a sporting event and had nightly riots for a few days at night. It was almost comical because the police had little experience in dealing with Professional Rioters. (The Koreans are nothing, if not good rioters - it seems to be a national sport.). The HK police would get battered around, their shields, batons and helmets taken from them. After the end of the evening's festivities, the Koreans gathered up all the acquired police equipment and politely hand it back to the police. It was all very civilized.

China is in it for the long haul? Every org save the democratically elected part of the US (and other) governments are as well. If you think Obama really runs things, or his admin... He is, sometimes, kept appraised... of that which he might need to know, and can be trusted to know. The economic, social, political, and intelligence wars are being run by various groups that have little to do with governments. Governments are just tools. Everybody is in the long term pool, save those in the shallow end of it. I doubt if Zero is allowed in without a life vest even so.

If China is actually in it for the long haul, then they aren't very good at the game. Wiping out your intelligentsia a few decades ago, and having few colleges and universities, most of those terrible, isn't long haul material. Nor is following the footsteps of nations obviously headed toward economic oblivion, which they are guilty. China is laughably frail. They might have some bite, but they know they will lose a lot of teeth if they do so, in the short and long term. Slaves. Not the brightest of them.

I'd much rather sink a ship full of neocons. Besides, a sunk carrier would mean nothing at all to them. No Jews aboard.

Thinking further about it, I reckon it would be a fun thought experiment if USA did go to war with China over Taiwan.

Follow the reasoning out, though. If you were China and wanted to stop the US invading, just exactly what would you threaten Abe Foxman (err, I mean Obama) with? Backing up, if you wanted a free hand with Taiwan, what capability would you develop? Which city in the world would you want to be able to turn into a glass bowl at will? The extreme ethnocentrism sword has two edges.